Just Time
by Darkwood
Summary: The noise was quiet, but the house was still. Claire was awake in an instant. One-shot, as of 11-07-09. It was stupid, it was easy. So easy to be together. Two-shot, as of 04-06-10.
1. Chapter 1

Just Time

A/N: Like I said at the start of **Inclination**, I don't intend to start these stories all the time. Sometimes they just happen. This one is another one of those. _This story has NOTHING to do with any other Resident Evil continuity I'm writing currently. _

I know I can be pretty subtle with some of my details. In the interest of making things clearer, I'm adding the year at the top of the copy for the story. Please PAY ATTENTION TO THAT.

EDIT: So I realized the year wasn't up on here. So I had to re-upload. Many apologies.

* * *

**2023**

The noise was quiet, but the house was still. Claire was awake in an instant. Even after twenty years, soft noises in the night woke her. Her husband was … had been very accepting of that. If it bothered him that his wife was often up, making coffee at quarter to two with a gun on the counter, he said nothing.

It was one of the reasons she married him. David was steady, dependable.

And David was there.

To say that he was the first person in her heart would have been a lie. To say that he was the _only_ person in her heart would have been a lie. She couldn't even say that he was the most constant person in her life. Claire had met David at twenty-nine, just over ten years ago. She was thirty-two when they got married.

It had taken that long for him to convince her that his love was quiet, and tolerant, and that even if he couldn't _understand_ her (which had been a large argument against him), he was more than capable of supporting her.

She couldn't expect David to pick up a gun to do it, but being the vigilant one in the house was not the worst thing she could think of.

Not when David was so good about everything else.

There had been a long, long discussion involving the situation with the key. In their coexistence, it was one of the few things that David had been unable to swallow when she first admitted it to him. It had been a hard thing to say, especially when he was so good about things. When he was so good at waiting until he was allowed and then wrapping her up in his concern.

In a way, David's concern had been what forced her to calm down. He was so worried about her, so conscious of her. It would have been criminal not to react well towards him, not to stop panicking and put the gun down, not to come out of the bathroom or the closet.

So she had hated to admit it to him, when she did, but she had.

Leon had a key to her house.

A key he was never required to give back.

Even reasonable David had words to say about that. About how it looked when his girlfriend… his _fiancée_ let other men have keys to her place, knew the code on the alarm. Even reasonable David took the normal conclusion to it.

Her temper had responded, and the ring had been thrown. If she was cheating on him, he didn't mean that ring, did he? If she was having some long, drawn out affair with a secret agent, getting married would just be some sort of cover, wouldn't it?

It was a failing in his support. It was something he needed to _understand_.

But he couldn't.

They'd gotten married anyway. David's stipulation to not changing the locks on the house was to add a new one. He knew Claire, knew what she was like with the storm shutters and the double front and rear doors to the place. If there was a lock to secure, before she went to bed, she secured it.

There was a deadbolt on the master bedroom door.

One that she turned, then, after sliding from bed and retrieving her sidearm as she went to inspect the rest of the house.

Other than that, and a few canceled business trips, David was reasonable, steady. He was boring.

In a life that occasionally offered near-poisonous floods of adrenaline, boring was preferable to normal. She and David had been happy.

Happy until the day _he_ _hadn't come_ _home_.

Her safe, boring banker never made it home from work one evening. A clockwork man, whose life ran on cogs – cogs tuned to _her_ schedule and _her_ eccentricities – was late one day.

Late forever.

It had caused a numbed out feeling in Claire, raised paranoia. Kidnapped? No, that wasn't reasonable, she told herself the whole time she waited up. Mugged? Possible, her husband wasn't the most imposing man there could be.

Her mind, absent of his lighthouse to brighten it, told her before she got the phone call what happened.

Dead.

A car wreck, or something, Claire couldn't remember at times like this, times when she would normally have told him to lock the door behind her and be ready to call the police. Times when the adrenaline quickened her pulse and she breathed more shallow.

Everyone had come back to her, after that. The ones that had found distance soothing. Even the close ones that had been forced to take space. And the only thing she could think to say or ask any of them was – _did I make David happy?_

Chris, at first, had no answer for her. His eyes told the story that his lips wouldn't say. Loss affected her brother terribly. Jill's return had saved him from wasting away, but even her continued presence, their reunion… it wasn't enough to heal away the two and a half years he'd anguished without her. Every time Chris lost someone it was like the first time. He was thirteen again and the police were packing them both into a squad car to take them down to the hospital, but it was too late. And Chris was still standing there tall, jaw set against the tears that threatened so that she'd be ok. Claire didn't really blame Jill for her brother's inability to respond to her question, not normally. But in the numb, questioning emptiness of the funeral preparations, she did.

Her brother had been opposed to her marriage to David anyway, at the beginning. Over time, Chris had warmed up to his brother-in-law, but there was an obvious, almost critical failure of understanding between them. David tried, he really did, but he was not good with family members. He'd been an only child, himself, and was raised by a single-mother. Claire's baggage was the right kind for him, because there wasn't a ton of people to consult about her, when something happened. It was good for him.

So that was her brother's answer to her catatonic question.

_He picked you because you were good for him._

Jill, after the twinge of anger she'd felt, was more helpful. She did not have the loss burned into the walls of her that Chris did. She had the weight of struggle. When Claire asked, as her sister-in-law was helping her to lay out his clothes for the viewing, Jill's answer had been more simple.

_ David loved you, and love makes you happy, along with other things. But he stayed, and only happy people stay._

Carefully, as she finished checking the upper floor, Claire pulled the safety from the gun. Her bare legs felt cool. The thermostat was still set the way David liked it, no change in two years from what had been before for so long. At night the system turned itself off. Cold or hot set in that was warmed or cooled away shortly before the start of the active morning.

The clock had said three-forty-seven. That meant almost three hours before the heater would start to inch back on.

Bare feet took the stairs one at a time, carefully.

Slowly.

The back staircase was the one she took, the one that let out near the rear door at the pass through from the study to the kitchen, just beside the laundry.

A soft noise again drew her attention, and Claire checked the study briefly before sweeping her gun into the kitchen doorway. She didn't turn on the light to blind herself, this was _her_ house, and she knew it better than whoever came in. She didn't need the light to make out something different in her kitchen.

The figure, the person, was crouched near the refrigerator, almost like tying a shoe.

"Alright," Claire said, "stand up slow."

The figure, obviously male, complied with her directions, hands lifting. It was as the gesture was made complete that she recognized the silhouette in the darkness.

"So, do you want the key back? It's been years since you pulled a gun on me." His voice was still smooth, after so many years, but lower, deepened with age and a hundred hurts he didn't talk about to much of anyone. "Can I turn around, or are you going to plug one into me for that?"

Leon.

Claire reset the safety on her Browning, heaving a sigh of relief, and leaned her shoulder into the doorframe.

How could she forget?

David. She'd been thinking about David.

It didn't stop, even with him across the kitchen from her. Leon stepped out of his work boots, grunting as he did so, and pulled the refrigerator open. He was still wearing his jacket, and she could see the gear still strapped to him.

"Bleeding?" Claire asked him.

"Not too much," Leon replied. "I hadn't gotten to the minor disinfecting yet. They shot me full of antibiotics before the plane."

"I'll get the stuff."

Turning from the kitchen while he rooted through her fridge, Claire made her way to the first floor bathroom, liberating her post-op first aide kit. It wasn't the same as the one she kept in the kitchen, the one for minor things like burns and the accidental knife wounds David had been prone to, even though she never seemed to slip. This one she'd put together years back and kept stocked afterwards for times like these.

David had been the one to show her how to check the expiration dates on things. Wagering under his breath once that _she'd be more upset if she did harm to Leon because of negligence than…_ he'd never finished the sentence.

Kneeling to retrieve the toolbox, Claire's heart felt heavy. So heavy she couldn't lift herself from the spot, let alone the toolbox full of medical supplies.

Her thoughts turned to Leon, Leon and his dedication to the job, Leon and his sacrificing everything for his goals, everything but her. Even letting go of what could have dragged him down. Tabitha, with the wide brown eyes and the hopeful smile on her lips. The halting, bashful admission on Leon's part that she was pregnant. Claire's heart had just about stopped, but she didn't blame Leon, she _couldn't_ blame him. And then when she'd gotten the call from the hospital. Gotten the call before he had because he was out on a mission and had listed her as an emergency contact before either set of parents that might be worried…

David hadn't argued then. She assumed David felt Tabitha was a comrade, another outsider worming her way into an unknown situation. Tabitha had relaxed David about the subject of Leon and his key to their house, that and the years of knowing just what the key was for.

Both of them had gone to the hospital, collected the woman's effects, and started making phone calls.

Her family had taken the body back home. Claire attended the funeral, David unable to take off to join her, and Leon still unreachable on his mission. No, David didn't have a problem with him after that. Not even when Claire bullied him into taking his bereavement leave as a guilt-wracked member of their small household. Not when she'd had to find the words to make better for him what years would have him making better for her.

Claire could not remember what words had left her lips to help him, but they had the same pain in Tabitha's loss, even though they were not the same to her when she was alive.

Leon's quiet response from that numb, empty week of _hers_ came back to her. That she could remember, though sometimes the comfort of it left her. His approach to her was different than the others, different even than David's would have been. They were partners, though, and they knew things people couldn't understand. They _understood_ in a way that even her husband hadn't. In a way he'd admitted Tabitha had never tried.

He was late, coming, but Claire didn't worry when Leon was late the way she worried when David was. Leon's dependability did not hinge on his punctuality. His smile was won, not expected, and his presence was a gift rather than the ticking of a clock.

She was seated, alone, in the kitchen, having coffee with her Browning when he came in. The last of the people coming to the calling hours at the house were gone, and there were dishes of food, casserole and different sized baking dishes all around. Claire was not surprised by it, or the fact that it was all David's kind of food. The calling hours had been attended by his sort of people. His coworkers and subordinates at the bank, some of his long-term clients. Classmates he had from college and a few from high school. Claire even saw one of his ex-girlfriends, and had to shake her hand.

They had all seemed unsurprised to see Claire pale, dry-eyed, and unresponsive.

Chris and Jill had made the calling hours, but to the people who came, the ones who tried to play family with her, she seemed poor in relations. David's mother had finally ushered them all out. The steel haired woman was a force to be reckoned with. She knew her daughter-in-law felt the loss. And she wouldn't hear a word otherwise, once snapping at one of the attendees that they hadn't been David's wife, and couldn't know her grief.

Silently, at that point, Claire had admitted to herself that they couldn't know her guilt.

That was the numbness, the questioning. In the wake of it all, she couldn't know if any of it had been real between them. David didn't seem real, he was a concept, a victim. He was gone, like she had to tell herself the zombies she had faced were gone – no longer human.

She couldn't cry.

So she'd sat down to drink her coffee in a kitchen full of food she hadn't been able to taste, and stared at her gun.

She didn't even pick it up when the back door opened and Leon came in. Her eyes felt dry and slow as she turned them on him, taking in his expression.

The look on his face had been a knowing one, an understanding one… but most of all it was an accepting one. It was similar, if not _more_ pained than the expression he had given her when she told him she was marrying David. No, this was more pain than even that.

Crossing the kitchen, he'd come up behind her and enveloped her in a hug. It was intoxicating, and drowsying. Claire slumped, then, the cold, stiffness of numbness thawing at the warmth of the body wrapping itself around her.

For the first time, she had felt the urge to cry. She felt _allowed_ to cry. David… her life with him, herself with him, was content but restrained. She was functional, but she deadened.

Leon had pointed as much out to her when she asked, mischievously, if he wore that pained look because he'd lost her to some other man's bed. His answer had been simple. _No_, he'd said. _I can't lose you to him the way that matters, I'm worried you're going to lose yourself. Stay Claire,_ he'd said.

Claire had never seen more than a few phrases pass between Leon and her husband. At the wedding, Leon had smiled at her and congratulated her. He'd shaken David's hand, a firmly, man-shake that she was proud of him for, and he'd wished him a happy life. Leon had wished David a happy marriage with Claire.

A drunk Chris later told her that Leon was a better choice for her, probably a better man.

But Leon wasn't _there_.

His grip on her shoulders was with her, his warmth against her back, his thoughts were always present, and his concern, but… Dependable as he was, trustworthy as he was, Claire could not touch him to reassure herself. Her friend was a great one, and it was a friendship she'd never let go of. When she married David, she locked it up like that. She locked up her care for Leon, the way she needed him to make her worst days bearable, and the one night when… All of it she sealed up.

And just like he'd worried, she lost a part of herself when she did.

The words had tumbled out of her mouth before she'd known she was saying them. _Did I make David happy?_

Leon gripped her tighter, hands squeezing her arms, and let his head hang over her shoulder. It was like he was burning the warmth into her, doing that. And when he spoke, his voice was low and steady against her ear.

_You're forgetting the good things, Claire. How you two laughed, and… went to baseball games. He used to trip on your dress at New Year's parties, but you liked it because he never bothered to get the tuxedo pants shortened enough. And… you two knew how to smile. _

She'd closed her eyes against his words, afraid of them, afraid of remembering what he was saying… in case it wasn't true, in case Leon was lying to her. But she knew he wouldn't. He was so close, and she couldn't deny the words that he kept speaking.

_ You brought that man to life, and I'm not going to let you worry about this, or hurt about not having done enough. He was happy. He told me._

There felt, in that instant, like there were words that neither of them were speaking, like there was more that needed to come out. But the tears had come instead.

The tears had lasted the evening, even when Leon put her upstairs to bed, promising to sit outside the door in case she needed him, and the following days. She could barely see for them at the funeral, and at the grave side it had taken both Leon and Chris to get her up when she fell heavily to her knees.

In the bathroom, now, she closed her fingers around the handle of the kit, and got to her feet on her own.

The stale, empty feeling, the dryness in her throat was gone.

She carried the kit to the kitchen and found Leon making a sandwich.

Turning on the light, she saw what the darkness had concealed from her. There was blood on the floor. Blood on the floor and down one of his pant legs, from a cut in his leg.

Adrenaline surged again. The Browning fell to the floor on one side, the toolbox med kit on the other. She didn't hear the noise either made as they fell.

Claire's feet carried her across the room to him, and she snatched him by the gear on his belt, pulling him back against her.

"Cla-?!" Leon managed to garble out as her arms circled his middle tightly. "What-?"

Shaking. Her whole body was shaking, and she was afraid to let go in case tears were on the other side of the shakes. So she held on tightly to him and pressed her face against the back of his neck.

"Don't lie to me," she said in an angry, tight voice.

He shifted, and from his startled look at his leg, Claire knew that he probably hadn't even noticed it. One hand lowered, and he touched the hole in his pant leg, fingers coming back wet and red. She knew it without having to look. "It was closed… must've dragged the scar wrong," he explained in a soft voice. "Calm down, I'm not dead."

The words were reassuring, smooth and gentle, as though saying them too loud might hurt her or take back their meaning. His clean hand covered hers on his middle, squeezing her fingers where they were threaded over and through each other.

If it were David, he would stand still, wait for her to move so he knew it was safe. But Leon was not David. The strong hand covering hers loosened her grip enough so that he could turn, and both arms slid around her, pulling her against him fully, guiding her face against the curve of his neck. Claire tightened her fingers in his jacket.

"We need to get you patched," she said in a weak, empty voice. "Your leg…"

"Will do for a bit. This needs done more," Leon replied, cheek pressing against her temple.

Words escaped her for a while, and Claire closed her eyes, leaning into him fully. One hand continued to cradle her head, the other made slow, warm strokes against her back.

Again her legs felt cold, but it was a different cold than the one on the stairs. That locked up thing… the part of herself she'd sealed away was loose. The memories of David, the fond ones and the worried ones all hushed themselves as she remembered other things, things from far longer ago.

And she compared her memories.

Some sort of comparison was inevitable.

Many things her late husband had been, passionate was not high on the list of adjectives that she would ever use to describe him. Not the way she could be… not the way Leon could be… not the way they could be on each other.

He didn't understand the same urgency they could feel, not until just before release. What was that line from _Carrie_? A whole lot of rubbing for a little bit of warmth.

Why it popped into her head _now_, in the kitchen, so late at night, Claire couldn't know. It wasn't the sort of thought to have. Even given the color of her mental comparisons, it was unreasonable.

Neither of them were the young, desperate versions of themselves that had experienced that evening together – either in Raccoon City or the one that had followed a few weeks after, desperately hushing each other to keep from waking Sherry.

It was a different lifetime, there was so much between then and now.

The gear on Leon's belt dug into her, making it less than ideal to lean against him, and reminding Claire that this couldn't be comfortable for him either. Her grip loosened, and she expected the reaction she always got when she did so. She expected Leon to loose her and for the two of them to get back to the business of the moment.

He took a deep breath, and Claire shifted her face to look up at him. The hand on the back of her head moved to her cheek, and his thumb stroked her cheekbone a moment as his eyes wandered down to her face. He watched her for a long moment, almost like he was testing her expression, or memorizing her face from that distance, and then his face came closer, and his lips pressed to hers.

Stubbornly, as her body melted against his, fingers curling in the worn leather of his jacket, Claire tried to remind herself that he needed medical attention.

Leon didn't seem to care, for the moment. When she sank against his chest, his head tilted slightly, and he parted his lips against hers.

His hair brushed her face, but Claire barely noticed it. Her lips parted to his kiss, and she found she could barely feel the gear digging into her hips as she leaned more fully against him. This was what kissing was _supposed_ to be like, her mind supplied, almost in subtitle to the whole act. Leon's tongue pressed into her mouth in the kiss. The hand rubbing her back pushed the fabric of her nightshirt up until his palm could spread across the bare skin of her back.

His touch was warm.

It felt like a delicious eternity of warmth. His fingers stroked her ribcage, cupped her cheek, and Claire gripped his jacket for dear life. Bleeding, she tried to remind herself, but it only came out as a weak voice in an otherwise occupied mind.

When he pulled his lips from hers, Claire was shaking again, panting for the breath he'd stolen from her. Her eyes lifted, finding his through the same haircut he'd had for years, the one with the gray just starting to show through the sandy brown that threatened to hide his eyes from her.

A part of her wanted to ask what brought this on, but another part of her knew better. That part, the released, woken part, knew just what it was and why it was. There wasn't an answer to what brought it on worth speaking. There was twenty years of understanding, survival, and dead spouses between them.

It was just time.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I know, I know, I know. I'm supposed to be working on other stuff. Inclination isn't finished. Well there's a timing issue with the next chapter. Anyone got music that approximates helicopter noises?

I really did intend for "Just Time" to be a one-shot. But Leon didn't see it that way. Nostalgia is high in older people. (Or maybe it's all the RE4 I've been playing.)

* * *

**2023**

Trying to say why he didn't care that he was bleeding would be like asking him to differentiate what part of the entity that was called Leon was him and what part was the scarred, abused body he inhabited. In his arms, the warmth that had drained from him after so many years of struggle was clinging, trying to burrow back into him. He hadn't even realized that was where it was hiding… that it was folded up in Claire.

But it did make sense.

What mission was it? He couldn't quite remember… when _had _Claire come to find him half passed out in his apartment, bleeding on the floor? How had she managed to get him up, little Claire? All he knew was that he woke up bandaged in bed. Claire had been lying beside him, just like on that horrible, terrible flight from the city, one hand barely touching his chest, the other pillowing her cheek where she was curled up without one.

That was when he got her keys, the first time. He hadn't stayed awake much, too tired… too sore, and he woke, slightly, groggily, to her sitting on the end of the bed staring at him. She'd leaned across him and taken his keys from where they were still clipped to the belt of his pants beside the bed… again he'd had to wonder how Claire managed him when he was unconscious… and held the ring up for him to see while putting another small ring onto them.

He hated to admit it, but his first thought had been that the pink heart keychain was going to make him look like a pansy. He couldn't quite get the energy to speak it aloud, but the look on his face said enough to her.

_You can lie about it if you want_, she'd said. _Tell anyone who asks its to your girlfriend's place._

That hadn't settled quite right. Leon had wanted to protest, but she didn't give him the time.

_You'll know whose they are,_ she'd said. _And where to go when you need help_.

Sometimes, the things she said were so simple, but they let the sun in through the clouds like morning. She seemed small, sometimes, but she was always bigger than anything else to him.

And she was _so warm_.

She didn't seem to care that she was pressing her hips against his with a utility light on one side and ammo casing on the other pushing right back, unforgiving against her soft hips. He didn't care either. Strangely, or almost strangely because he just accepted things about Claire when he got them, her trusting press was almost like having a weight removed from his chest. Maybe that was a little backwards, but it was true. Air rushed in and he could breathe. He tightened his grip on her, reveling in the smooth feeling of her skin under his roughened hands.

A lot about Claire could be like an old wooden bat. Trustworthy, brutal… but she was well made, dependable… and breakable if you hit too hard. He'd never tell Claire that. Never hurt her feelings to compare her aloud to a bat, because it _would_ hurt her feelings and he knew that as much as he knew that the way she was pressing against him couldn't be comfortable with the things attached to his belt, no matter _how_ horny she was.

The same way he knew he was too tired to finish it, if they started.

"Shhh," he cooed to her, lips pressing to hers gently though he got enough space between them so that he could get words out. "I can't… not tonight."

But just as he'd silenced her thinking, Claire did the same. Her arms moved, inching up his back, fingers tight against his jacket. Pulling it to keep him in place, she pressed her mouth to his. Her tongue pressed its way into his mouth, and Leon's eyes slid shut.

Like the first good breath after too long underwater, the kiss was a relief. He gripped her, hand against the skin of her back, and pulled her closer, drawing her between his legs and trapping her against his chest. The same relieved feeling turned into greedy gasping for air, needy lips melding to hers in the kiss.

And all the oxygen was waking him up.

She had a way of doing that to him, waking him up. Setting him straight. Egging him on… challenging him.

Claire wasn't the immediate wet dream that some of the women he'd met were. Not to him. His personality got hard over a different kind of woman _immediately_, but it never let go of someone like Claire.

Tabitha was the kind of woman he got off on instantly. She was indulgent, and she let him get off in her whenever he was around. She was soft, and she was sweet, and she ignored him when she felt like it. She wasn't the support, the confidant that Claire was.

In the years since… Leon's guilt had compounded to monumental levels about the dead woman who'd been carrying his child. He thought about her like that. The dead _woman_. It wasn't _their_ child, it was _his_ child. Not because Tabitha hadn't wanted the baby, because he hadn't wanted one with her.

She was a warm wet spot. A pair of arms to wrap around him, nails to claw his back, breasts to fondle. Hands to slap him in the face when she was angry. And Tabitha was angry. Angrier than Claire's husband. Unlike David, Tabitha knew she had Leon. She had him by the balls.

He'd warned Claire against losing who she was with a man who doted on her… he'd said those words through a haze of self-hate, that he couldn't be the one to do it.

And, in a way, he hated himself for Tabitha. Not because she hated him, though she probably did in a way, but because she was a replacement. She was a replacement that had threatened to become permanent.

Claire was much better about Tabitha than Leon was about David. She'd invited her to things, even when Leon was away. It was dishonest of both of them… of all of them to play nice like that. And Tabitha always had it out with him when he got back about how his real woman had been showing off again. And then the teasing, with her arms around him.

Tabitha knew how to press Leon's buttons. The tirade would make him angry, and when he was tired, anger could keep him awake. So she would start by making him angry, by sinking that cold knife into his stomach, and then she would put her hands on him. She liked it rough, she could take it, she thought. But Leon was not the sort of person, he knew even if she didn't, that was at his best when he was angry.

She'd thought he was already sleeping more than once when she'd gotten up to get aspirin, sore before the afterglow was even dim. And the look she always cast over her shoulder was scared.

He tried to remind himself to be more gentle, even when she was asking for him to be rough. Tabitha wasn't like he was. Tabitha wasn't like Claire. Tabitha didn't _know_ how fast he could be, how cold… how lethal. Tabitha thought that having him by the balls put her in control like someone's master. She wasn't enough of a prison guard to make that work.

Leon was a professional, government sanctioned killer. His replacement girlfriend didn't seem to understand this about him. It had taken a while, but Tabitha eventually decided that it was easier to just take her clothes off when he got in rather than to try and rile him up first.

Did he take advantage of the period when Tabitha didn't understand how best to come on to him? Yeah. He did. He admonished himself for it, but he did. He let her draw out in him the worst, even knowing she didn't know how to handle it.

Tabitha wasn't the person he wanted to draw out that part of him, if he wanted anyone to draw that out. He didn't want anyone to, but it was worse that Tabitha did it because he didn't care enough about her to try and make that part of him any better. So he didn't trust himself around Tabitha, didn't trust himself _with_ Tabitha.

Not the way… He had forced himself not to admit this before, but before was then and not now. Not the way that he trusted himself with Claire. But for all the amount of concern, kindness, and care… for as much as he _wanted_ Claire, he couldn't be the one to tuck her in at night, be too tolerant about her nightmares and tug her to him when she had them. He knew how it would be, if only…

For years he'd lived on that 'if only'. He'd watched Claire get watered down to pretty red hair, a slender waist, and her paranoia.

David was keeping her alive, making her smile, but he wasn't making her happy. He was like a refrigerator she was stored in.

Claire needed someone to force the gun out of her hand. She needed, after a nightmare, to be held, to be let to cry, and then to be woken up in her body. He knew it, because they were the same. But he had seen David's reactions to her freaking out, seen them on a night when he was in the house but not injured.

Her husband sat and waited for her to _let_ him do things.

Leon did his best not to think David less of a man for it.

He'd let David do what he wanted, because they weren't friends, they weren't brothers. They were in love with the same woman, and Leon felt a little egotistical to think that if he were in David's position, he'd be better at it. But he and Claire both had a drive for something that wouldn't let them be together.

It was stupid, it was easy. _So easy_ to be together.

Lips pressed to one another's, hands clutching, stroking skin through clothes and sliding under them. Scars traced, tongues tangled.

Claire had him pushed against the counter one moment, settled between his legs, pelvis against his, chest arched into his as his hand slid down the back of the pajama shorts, under the hemline of her panties, and he gripped her by the rump. Her hands were up the back of his shirt, bare forearms warm against his skin, and her tongue was stroking his firmly.

In the next moment, Leon turned them, pressing her against the refrigerator, knocking her shoulders against it, and he unclipped the light and the ammo as she threaded a leg between his and lowered her lips to his neck. He didn't even hear them hit the ground as he dropped them.

He reached for her, but she tugged the jacket down off his shoulders, hooked it around his arms, and pulled him against her. Her body felt hot, and everywhere she was touching made his body feel the same.

The heat between them was almost like a fire. If Claire had been watered down before, that was quickly going away. The fire boiled the water off, it seemed, brought back the Claire that was more than a collection of nervous habits.

And she was infinitely more sure of herself, this time.

That night… the night he played over in his brain whenever he couldn't stand it, whenever he wanted to quit his job and go be normal…

Shy was not something he attributed to Claire. But he'd started it. She was _staring_ at him again, staring the way that told him she was undressing him with her eyes, the way she did when he _had _undressed in her presence… and he could _feel it_. He could feel her eyes on him, feel the close scrutiny of her gaze. So he'd done just what he'd thought of doing for… for what felt like forever.

Leon had turned to her and kissed her. He meant it to be gentle, to let her know that he knew she was looking at him, but the minute his lips touched hers she'd parted hers, and his reaction was stronger. When she reacted, one of his arms curled around her, and his lips fastened onto hers more firmly. Leaning her back against the bed they'd just been watching nearly muted quiet tv on, he'd pinned her, not worried about anything more than the taste of her lips and the grip she had on the front of his shirt.

He shifted to settle between her legs, mouth occupied, hands stroking her sides and trying to find the hem of her shirt to get it out of her jeans when he felt her shiver, and heard the soft, surprised noise into the kiss.

Forcing himself to pull back, to slow down, to _stop_, he looked at her. Claire, lips still parted from their kiss, breathing heavily, was blushing. His own breath came in gasps as well. They stared at each other for a long moment. The dusting of pink on her cheeks grew darker, more pronounced. He stilled his hands, as soon as he realized they were still bothering the side seams of her t-shirt, and felt guilty. Guilty because Claire was his friend. Guilty because they weren't alone. Guilty because he wasn't really as guilty as he was pretending to be.

His eyes had shifted to Sherry, to the girl sleeping on the cot on the far side of the room… He straightened up, legs still planted between hers, and made to apologize. Before he could talk, she'd stripped the shirt off over her head, completing the maneuver with the sometimes puzzling agility that she had. _That what you wanted?_ she'd asked, voice hushed and teasing.

Her bravado was interesting, considering when she blushed she blushed all the way down past her collar bone. Her skin wasn't as pale as he'd imagined, as he'd thought it would be, under her clothes. A few scars, here and there (mostly new ones), but otherwise she was smooth, a little pale, and soft. He didn't remember letting his hands find her sides again, but they were there, as soon as the shirt was taken out of the way, and the skin that greeted his questing fingers was warm and smooth and alive.

The sight of her then seduced him. The knowledge that she was willing and he wasn't forcing something that was all in his head onto a _friend_, (dammit!) blocked out the little girl on the cot. Sherry slept like a rock, nothing quieter than a gunshot could wake her. They'd tried and failed on more than one occasion and had to just carry her to the car. They'd need to be quiet, but not silent.

It would work. His brain had raced ahead of his body, drinking in the sight of her almost exposed body. Dumbly, he nodded, and even though he was twenty-one, he felt like he was sixteen again and Claire was the first woman he was getting to touch without clothes on. He was leaned down against her in an instant, torso flush against hers, soft skin making him shiver. His hands had slid up her sides, fingers stroking greedily, and curled around her to fumble with the clasp of her bra.

He'd offered, as he was doing it, lips against her neck, her cheek, nose buried in her hair as his lips brushed the curve of her ear, to stop. To let go, to apologize and get off.

It was an empty offer. He wouldn't be able to stop without her doing something physical to him… something that would leave a mark.

_Don't you dare_, Claire had stammered in her low whisper, hands gripping his waist, hips pressing into his. She must not know what she was doing to him. Her blush remained, but as he rid her of the bra, lips smoothing down her neck to take one of those soft mounds between his lips, she curled her legs around his torso.

The same way she was wrapping a leg over his hip now.

She was older, they were both older. They had been in their twenties when they'd claimed each other's bodies on that hotel bed, grunting and moaning lowly to each other. Fevered, hushed demands, pleads for this or that… and it was the work of an evening to satisfy all they'd wanted from each other. Not an entire evening. There wasn't enough energy for a whole night, but as much of an evening as they could manage. And between the two of them, somehow they managed to get something they'd _needed_ from each other.

It had burned into his mind how much _more _he wanted her to satisfy in him. How much there still was all to be taken and given back and forth.

He wondered if they were going to fuck against the refrigerator, now. But despite the urgency he felt, the feeling that kept him glued to her, stroking her skin… kissing her wherever he could, Leon felt weariness tugging on him.

It was strange, he only felt tired when he was near Claire. Not… worn out tired. Just… relaxed enough to get rest. Everyone else… anyone else was a part of the job, a person to protect or something to get to safety.

"Upstairs," Claire moaned into his ear.

He hadn't even realized his hand was kneading her breast like that, tugging at the fabric of the tank top she had worn to bed, until her hand closed over it. "Claire…" he tried again. He didn't want this to wash out. He didn't want to disappoint them both…

"I don't care if you fall asleep halfway through," Claire's words tripped over themselves as they rushed out of her mouth. She put her foot back to the floor and pushed them off the cool metal of the fridge. Somehow it didn't matter that she was so small in comparison to him, she was strong enough to take his weight and push back. Her breath brushed his nose, and he almost chuckled to think that at three a.m. she had morning breath. "It's _cold_ down here."

Letting her have her way, Leon pulled his jacket off and put it around her shoulders before wrapping an arm around her. "Ok, upstairs."

A relieved little smile curved the corner of her lips, and she leaned into him trustingly until he swatted her rump to send her up the stairs. The back stairs weren't strictly wide enough for two people to get up them side by side. Claire had been picky about that when she'd gotten the house. It made it more defensible if only one thing could get at you on them.

He wondered, as she headed up them in front of him, if she still thought about it like that.

He did this wondering partly to distract himself from the fact that she was in front of him, heading up the stairs, and the only thing that really caught the light was her legs as they moved upwards ahead of him, peaking out from beneath his jacket.

It would be a bit lecherous to describe how often he'd fantasized about Claire's legs. He liked to think of himself as being far more mature than that, than dreaming about a woman he didn't have… but… he was so _good_ about Claire. He was good to her.

And he really didn't think she'd mind.

She had given him those fantasies about them herself. She was the one who'd locked them around his waist, tight and squeezing him like she'd never let go that hushed, guilty night on the crummy hotel bed. If she protested, she'd have to _do something _about it.

Maybe dull, boring David had known all along that this was lurking. Known that he and Claire were never more than half a minute from throwing each other into bed and working out their every problem between the sheets or on top of the blanket.

Leon didn't bother to stop himself or even hide the fact that he was staring at her ass as she ascended the stairs before him, given those thoughts. He wasn't looking at another man's wife, now. He wasn't looking at a widow. Claire was a widow, but that was more of a title and less a definition anymore.

He'd waited so he wasn't. So she wasn't.

Claire's touches were almost verbal, to him. He knew the difference in them, he'd learned it over the years of knowing her before she ever met her dead husband. He knew what she touched like when she was scared, when she was worried… He was sorry to say he knew what she touched like when she was sad, depressed… He knew how she gripped and stroked when she was aroused… He knew how she smacked shoulders or held hands when she was happy…

It wasn't obsession. Leon wouldn't let it be obsession that had taught him all this about Claire. It was a simple lack of words. They had been through something that had stopped speech, and in its place, there had been action and touch.

Knowing how she spoke her moods through touch, he'd known that it wasn't right before. He'd known that the lingering hug she'd been giving him wasn't a sign for him to go further, it was a desperate need for comfort. She complained of cold, by holding him longer when they met, and he did his best to give her warmth the way she needed it.

Not by pressing himself against her, not by doing early what would only be right if given time… but by being there, eating meals. Calling from the airport and going 'home' when work was done, checking the locks and making laundry for her to deal with. Playing boyfriend while being a boy scout.

At the top of the stairs, she waited for him to join her. He met her, lips finding her cheek, and slid an arm around her. She was just as warm as in the kitchen, but something was different.

She stilled.

He stilled in response, momentarily unsure if he had read wrong what that had been in the kitchen. He leaned back, meeting her eyes, and waited.

He'd do that, for her.

After a few moments she rewarded his waiting with words. "I need to check the door," Claire said in a dejected tone.

And there she was again, the nineteen year old so serious and determined. So willing and eager for him, but unrelenting about safety. Leon started to protest, to do it for her, but as usual, as she always did, she glared at him, and he stopped, just as easy.

"Besides, our guns…"

Leon nodded, with a chuckle.

"You. Bedroom," Claire said, motioning.

"Yes, ma'am."

Claire headed back down the stairs, pale, smooth shoulders descending into the dark mouth of the staircase, and Leon watched her. Long ago, he'd been shocked at how easy it was for him to forget things that he normally did automatically when he came here, when he was in her house. It had always been her house to him, even with the husband as an appendage to it. When he was here, just like she'd intended when she gave him the key all those years ago, he let go. He let her be strong for him, check the things he would normally check and keep their guns handy. It was, now, an effortless thing for him to do, even though it was hard at first. It had since become routine for him. So he couldn't help but watch her, knowing that there was some rest spell cast on him when he was here, in her house.

Even if he had no desire to rest at that moment.

What he wanted made it somewhat strange, her sinking out of sight like that.

She'd be back, though, he knew. And if he wasn't in her bedroom, she'd probably start shoving. Leon turned, headed into her room, and had to stop as he opened the door.

He'd been in it before, he should have known it wouldn't have changed. Claire was living in a clockwork tomb of David, since his death. The bed was still in the colors the man had changed it to when they were married, the thermostat still ran on his timer. It was cold in the upstairs, even in the bedroom. Claire was right when she'd said it was cold.

But despite the physical sameness of the room, the scent was all her.

What was weary in him shrank at that scent, the way it had when she had pressed her lips to his against the fridge downstairs. Closing his eyes, he inhaled a deep breath of it, and stepped in. It got stronger as he crossed the room, sat on the bed, and as he lost the top layer of his clothing, setting his spare in easy reach on the night stand. It nearly overwhelmed him as she came in and locked the door to the bedroom.

There was no shyness in her, then. His eyes found her and she snapped the deadbolt into the locked position before stripping the shirt over her head. Both guns in one hand, she dropped her tank top to the floor as she crossed the room.

Pants halfway down his legs, Leon froze, watching her as she came over to him. One hand found his shoulder, sitting him upright, and Claire threw a leg over his lap just like he was a motorcycle.

"Where were we?" Claire asked, leaning in, lips finding his. Her gun hand shifted, depositing the Browning and his Custom piece beside his spare on the night stand. An idle part of Leon's mind wondered if there would be fumbling between the three guns if they needed to be armed quickly, but the thought was like a leaf in the breeze, it went away easily.

His hands found her waist, pulled her against him, hips to his. This girl… this woman wasn't an immediate hard on… not when they first met, no, not then. Then she'd been written off as a slightly more accomplished girl next door. That was before he'd seen her with a gun, before she'd stumbled, bleeding, from the explosive encounter and _kept walking_.

No, now she was a constant one. It had taken more self-control than he would ever admit verbally to spend the last two years without doing just what he was doing then.

A moan parted her from the kiss. Claire's head tipped back, an arm winding around his neck. She was warm. The skin against his neck, the softness of her thighs against his… deliciously warm.

The weariness threatened, loomed over him like one of the nightmare creatures clinging to the ceiling and hissing down at them. But she had said she didn't care.

Her hips ground against his, and he found he didn't either.

There was a brief struggle as he got her to her back. It was him against their clothing, but it didn't take much of a fight before he won. She was, after all, helping him.

And then they were naked, and just as before, her skin was hot. His lips found hers, then the hollow of her neck, the underside of her chin. Claire's lips blazed heat on his temple, his cheekbone, where he would let her, where he gave her the moment to return his kisses. Instead, she reciprocated by wrapping her legs around him.

If his mind could think beyond the press of her skin against his… beyond the kiss or the sensation of her breasts pressed into his chest… the heat of her embrace around the stiffness of his need for her, he might have wondered why they were so quiet. But his mind didn't have that kind of multiple focus, not then.

All Leon's focus was on her. On the rush of her breath against his ear, the clench of her legs around him. He was better occupied with the fist that tightened her fingers against his back, the softness of her hair against his cheek, and the smell of her sweat where his face was buried in the curve of her neck. His thoughts were barely able to struggle beyond the sensation of filling her as he was, the desperate, urgent desire for her in competition with the looming, hissing threat of his exhaustion that hung over them.

Breath for breath she matched him, body twisting and shivering into the press of his. Her lips pressed against his neck, and then her teeth sank into him, nails mimicking the act, puncturing the skin of his back, and she clenched around him, her whole body tightening. The one noise she made above a hushed moan was the call of his name that she gasped out then.

He lost himself to that sound, to that heat. Buried in her like she'd wanted… like _he'd_ wanted, the way they both needed.

Locked together in that room, in that embrace, his thoughts sank slowly away from consciousness. And in that release, in that warm, comforting feeling of safety, cradled in her embrace, Leon let the exhaustion win. It was ok, for a little while. The exhaustion didn't really have him, nor did the paranoia or the mission. Claire did.

And that was how Claire had gone from an eventual arousal… something he needed some of the time to something he couldn't get enough of. Work, the fragile world he protected got a lot of him. Time, energy, blood… but Claire kept some of him tucked away from that. Feeling and thought, she had those, had the man that he was and mastery of the body the man inhabited…

Leon let the exhaustion have his waking mind. The only thing it could have. He knew it wouldn't have it long. Now that the time was right, there wasn't anything for anyone else to have.


End file.
